Sunday, 9 March 2008

Forecasters at the UK Met Office have issued severe weather warnings for much of the UK from Sunday to Tuesday. Winds of 70 m.p.h. are expected across southern and western parts of the British Isles with perhaps up to 80 m.p.h. in exposed areas as severe weather brings the risk of high waves and flooding.

The Environment Agency has issued a severe flood warning for the whole of the Devon and Cornwall coast amid storm warnings for south and west Britain.

The UK National Tide Gauge Network of 45 tide gauges was set up as a result of severe flooding along the east coast of England in 1953 and is now owned and funded by the Environment Agency.

The Tide Gauge Network forms part of the National Tidal & Sea Level Facility (NTSLF). NTSLF is hosted by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) and BODC is responsible for the management of the tide gauge data and their access via the web.

The NTSLF was established in 2002 to reflect the importance of national sea level monitoring to the public and government, as well as to the academic community. Quality controlled processed data are available for download — free of charge.

Each search provides the means to download a comma-separated file of metadata. For entries supplied by BODC, the application provides a direct link to our online data request facility, which eliminates the need for the user to repeat their search to request our data holdings.

BODC maintain the inventory as part of our responsibilities as the UK's National Oceanographic Data Centre within the framework of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC). Currently, the inventory comprises over 32,000 records relating to current meter deployments by more than 140 organisations. Not all deployments will have returned data and usage restrictions may vary.

Search capabilities

You may opt to use a simple or advanced query form. Both forms allow you to build a query from a number of categories, each of which is initially set to a broad default value that you can make narrower. The results of your search are presented in tables and on a interactive map.

The simple search allows you to search by

geographic area

deployment date

originator's country and organisation

The advanced search provides additional options, namely

deployment duration

instrument

parameters measured

water depth

instrument depth

You may also opt to include/exclude those entries with known data restrictions and deployments where it is known that the instrument malfunctioned.

Tuesday, 4 March 2008

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) announces the launch of a web site for the CARBON-OPS project — an operational air-sea carbon flux observation capability for the UK.

The web site provides access to ship-based measurements of pCO2 and ancillary surface underway and meteorological data in near real-time. The data are received daily via satellite from five UK research vessels.

Spatial display of cruise tracks (and measurements) and plots of data are available online. Project participants may also access a near real-time data download facility. Delayed mode (fully quality controlled) data and output from computer models will also be made available in the future.

More about CARBON-OPS

CARBON-OPS is a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded Knowledge Transfer initiative (2007-2009), which aims to demonstrate a 'supply chain' for automated measurement of the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) in the surface of the ocean, through data processing and archiving, to supplying end-users for research and policy development.

Carbon monitoring is required by Governments and scientists to support global climate change predictions and to provide indicators of CO2 and related variables, such as pH, for the marine environment.

The data collected by CARBON-OPS will be used by the UK Met Office and other end-users for testing predictions from operational ocean models. The models will then be used to assist the UK Government with climate and environmental policy decisions by providing indicator products related to changes in ocean CO2 uptake, ocean acidity, and related impacts on global climate and marine ecosystems.

It will also supplement UK data collection efforts by Voluntary Observing Ships (VOS) in the frame of European projects such as CARBOOCEAN.

About BODC

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is a national facility for
preserving and distributing oceanographic and marine data. Staff have
direct experience of marine data collection and analysis and they work
alongside information technology specialists to ensure that the
biological, chemical, physical and geophysical data handled are
documented and stored for current and future use.